


utah

by catarinquar



Category: The X-Files
Genre: A Map of Us: 50 States of Sex, Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Episode: s09e19-20 The Truth, Post-Season 9 (X-Files), Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-07-08 03:49:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15922283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catarinquar/pseuds/catarinquar
Summary: She wonders if married dog-owner ASAC Scully with the Salt Lake City branch would sit at cafés on Saturday afternoons and sip coffee; if she would glance at babies with less or with more sadness; if they would have adopted, her and her stay-at-home husband; if he would be at home in the two-story now, or if he would sit here with her. If his hand would be this warm, this soft, this safe.-post-the truth. on the run from everyone and everything, but slowly creeping back towards each other.





	utah

**Author's Note:**

> written for the “a map of us: 50 states of sex” challenge.

In Florida, when she’d been alive, alive, alive but lost in a forest in the middle of the night sometime after he’d turned down her honest-to-God proposition masquerading as cheese-and-wine consorting, she had sung to him; croaked, really, that she’d make sweet love to him.

Now, on the run somewhere, anywhere-not-here, she finally does. _They_ finally make sweet love like they haven’t since before Oregon, really, and it is made all the sweeter by their months and months of separation, she thinks.

When he came back, it took him a while to come _back;_  false starts and shaking footholds; his involvement in a certain blessed event apparently not clear. Then, after the abruption -  they didn't want to risk it.

“I love you, Mulder - please, do you know how much I - ah, I love - pleasepleaseplease -”

“God, Scully, so beautiful. You're so - and you have no idea. How much. How much I missed you.”

 _Who did you miss_ , she thinks, but they’re slow, tender, and just the languid physicality of it is enough to make everything else go away - for a few minutes, the fear is not real; even the guilt disappears and all she feels is love. Her love for Mulder, always. His love for her, still, after everything she’s done. She wants to crawl into him, curl up, stay there forever.

-

It doesn’t last long - neither the sex nor that feeling. They're on the run, moving at least twice a week and changing identities just as often. She begins to feel a little like after she was returned, not knowing who Dana is, not knowing who Scully is either, this time. Camille, Ann, Jodie, Ellen - Scully and Dana both disappear somewhere in between them; hide. The difference, she thinks, is that this time they’re _good_ and she doesn’t really feel like trying very hard to find either of them.

She's not an agent, she’s not a sister, she's not a daughter, and she's not a mother.

She wonders every now and then how Mulder feels.

They’re married, most of these people that they are but aren’t, and that suits the both of them just fine: post-thirty five marrieds aren’t expected to chatter as much, so it’s easier that way.

A month in they have a scare, and at the next sticky motel Mulder leaves her in the room for long enough that she thinks he’s ditched her. He comes back with scissors and hair colouring.

She cut him off from his child; he cuts off her hair. Fair’s fair.

-

They were never good at being silent for long, though; never good at running in place.

“I want to go to Canada.”

She’s mostly stopped noticing the absence of _Scully_ in his sentences; what with Scully being largely absent as a rule, now - but here it is suddenly glaring again. Maybe because he isn’t asking her anything, although that’s fine. She doesn’t have an opinion, isn’t going to make choices for them anymore.

“Yes.”

They leave New Mexico behind. On their way through Arizona they start fighting. In Nevada, they start fucking. She doesn't know what hurts more and she definitely doesn't know what she likes better for it.

With his hands grabbing her hips hard enough to bruise, she arches her back and whimpers, _faster_ , and with his hands twisted in her hair she angles her ass and begs, _harder_ , and with his hands holding down hers above her head she lifts her hips and locks her ankles and gasps, _I hate you_.

After - sometimes they curl up together and he kisses _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry_ , into the curve of her neck and into her clavicle and her ribs and her hip bone and her thighs and as he makes his way down to repent, her nails carve the remnants of their love into his back.

Sometimes he leaves and she considers disappearing herself before he comes back, just to see, just to see - but then he’s there again and they fall asleep at arm’s length. Wake up to drink bad coffee together, like husband and wife just getting started on their shared, silent midlife crisis.

-

They dump the car and make their way up through Utah to Salt Lake City in various busses. Eric Johnson smiles at two kids crawling around on the seats across the aisle; his wife Sophie tries her best - but Scully falls short, fails, gives up.

It is Eric, she thinks, who takes Sophie’s hand at first - but it must be Mulder who keeps holding Scully's in his.

The Johnsons have enough money, somehow, to stay at a fairly expensive hotel across from a little park. They kiss in the lobby while waiting for the receptionist and then make good use of both the ensuite jacuzzi and the ridiculously soft bed.

-

The weight of his head on her chest feels not quite unlike and not quite like William, when she would fall asleep on the couch with him lying there. Their sweat is cooling, though, and she doesn’t think about William; she doesn’t.

“Shoulda taken that transfer, huh.”

His head suddenly gets heavier; she feels the air leave her lungs, slowly and then all at once, and she doesn’t feel particularly inclined to draw it back in.

“You’d be ASAC out here, have a stay-at-home husband, a two-story and a dog. A billion little kids.”

“I can't have children.” She had a child, barely half a year ago. Really - she barely had another child, four and a half years ago.

“Well, you’d be ASAC and have a stay-at-home husband and a two-story and a dog.”

“I wouldn't marry anyone.”

“Why not?”

 _You know why_.

He lifts his head, she thinks to look at her, but her eyes are closed.

“Would you marry me?”

“Yes.”

“Are you still going to say _yes_ if I change that _would_ to _will?”_

She kept him honest, that's what he said, back then. She makes an effort to breathe.

“No.”

-

The Johnsons go to the park, to the shopping mall, to fancy restaurants. They smile over cappuccinos and sundaes while Mulder and Scully hold hands under the tables.

She tries to look at babies in their strollers, in their parents' arms. Kids on playgrounds and roller skates. Says to herself, _two seconds_ , and manages to hold for five.

Wonders if married dog-owner ASAC Scully with the Salt Lake City branch would sit at cafés on Saturday afternoons and sip coffee; if she would glance at babies with less or with more sadness; if they would have adopted, her and her stay-at-home husband; if he would be at home in the two-story now, or if he would sit here with her. If his hand would be this warm, this soft, this safe.

If it would say, _I’m sorry_ , say, _I forgive you_ , say, _I’m here_ ; if anything would have ever happened to demand those reassurances. If they would feel anything like this.

It is a tenuous grasp, sometimes just their fingertips touching, the exerted pressure holding them up under the force of gravity; if one lets go, so must the other necessarily.

They don't let go.

-

The weight of his head on her chest, his arms caging her in; it feels like - something not quite unlike _good_. His hair is a little longer now, sweat-damp, silk-slick, soft, soft, soft.

“Mulder.”

“Yeah.”

“We've been here for five days now. We've been… quite public.”

“Yeah.”

His hand twitches under her, against the ouroboros. Where he’d always touch, hover, touch; where he made his affection quite public from the start.

“Aren't you worried?”

“Hmn. It's nice here, don't you think.”

Her arms snake further around him, his neck, his shoulders; her legs tangle in with his; holding him tighter, and closer, closer, closer.

If she can't curl up inside his chest, can she take him into hers. He might just be her whole heart as it is; almost her whole heart.

“Yes.”

-

Cocooned under the blankets, then; inches apart, eyes flitting over the other's face; mapping, charting, breathing the same air, the same space.

“I would have followed you here. If you had left, if…”

If he had kissed her, if he had taken her to his bed, if they would even have made it that far - would _he_ be her stay-at-home husband, would they have had a little boy, somehow, out here.

If they had made love that night in his apartment, would she have left at all?

Left, left, left. The reason he left is this: she told him to leave.

“I shouldn't have.” Left. But she didn't leave; she was taken again, again, again, and he went to the end of Earth to save her. She told him to leave. “I shouldn't have told you to leave.”

“I shouldn't have decided to leave,” he says, and she shakes her head, _no, no, no. Not your fault_.

It has been such a long time since she last cried; her constricting throat and then the tears take her by surprise.

“I _told_ you to _leave_ , and I shouldn't have.”

“We made a decision, the best decision we could. And so did you.”

She did, she didn't, she did, she didn't. Her son, Mulder’s son, their son - someone else’s son, now; is safe and warm and loved and learning to call another woman ma, mama, mom, mother. Does he get to have a father this time around, she wonders.

“I was so scared, when I was pregnant. When I found out. I didn't know if it was you - I didn't know how, and I was scared to find out, and I hated myself for hoping you - because you were gone and then you were dead, and what kind of mother would I be if I hoped you were the - what kind, what kind of mother - I gave him _away_ -”

His turn at shaking his head, ostensibly _no, no, no, Scully, never_ , because they've talked this one out before, but she nods, _yes, I felt those things, I did give him up, I gave up_. She breathes too much of their shared air and is rewarded with too little oxygen.

He tugs her closer, skin to skin. His chest tells hers, _here, lungs, breathe like this. Here, heart, beat like this_.

Does a father get to have a son this time around, she wonders.

“He was yours, Mulder. Your son, and I gave him away.”

“The best that you could, Scully.”

“No, I should have gone with you. We should have taken him with us.”

“We couldn't go on the run with a baby, it wouldn't be safe.”

“But he _wasn't_ safe, Mulder, he wasn't safe now and I couldn't - they took him, and they tried to kill him, and they injected him with something, and I never - I _didn't_ protect him.”

This into the hollow of his throat, clawing at his chest; she still wants, needs to stay in there, please, Mulder, is there any space left for her in there.

“So you did the best that you could. You made sure he'd be safe. That he'll be safe.”

Will he be safe, she wonders. Would he ever have been safe - if she'd left for Utah and an ASAC position and a dog and a two-story; if Mulder had followed her; if he'd married her and become her stay-at-home husband; if they’d had a little boy.

Would that boy have ever, ever, ever been safe.

“He was supposed to _be_ safe.”

This into the dip above his clavicle; the dip that shifts and changes as his arms wrap tighter around her, drawing her closer, closer, closer.

This - the closest to safe they ever get.

-

It takes hundreds and hundreds of their synchronised heartbeats; it takes grey light and the distant sounds of early morning in the city. Takes dried out and stinging eyes to make her finally, finally say it.

“Do you know. How sorry I am.”

“Scully.”

“Hmn-no. I need... need you to tell me. To say it.”

He tenses up around her, goes from _safe_ to  _cage_ and she tries not to react in kind.

“I think if I… forgave you. It would mean I thought you needed my forgiveness. That I blame you.”

“And I think… you did - you _have_ blamed me, haven't you.”

Not a question, this; he’s blamed her, has _had_ to, and they both know it. In his prison cell, he’d comforted her but kept silent, had said nothing to either confirm or deny her fear that he should never forgive her.

Now, his lips press into the crown of her hair and he breathes out through his nose; a quiet, deep sigh as he relaxes his death grip on her just a little.

In the space of his silence, she has time to think it; does she still keep him honest.

“But not anymore, Scully. Not anymore.”

-

The Johnsons check out three days later, and Clarice Holden goes to get a tiny white _W_ inked on her rib cage while her husband Michael signs the lease for an over-large dirt brown SUV.

He’d looked at her hungrily that morning, made those Hannibal Lecter noises, nipped at her thighs.

“I’m going to eat you now, Clarice.”

-

The Holdens stop for dinner in Garden City up at Bear Lake and end up staying for the night in a rented beach lodge.

Mulder is on her as soon as the door is closed behind them.

“So s‘it me or just the Utah summer making you all hot and bothered, huh, Scully? Too hot for all these clothes. Gotta get you out of them, yeah?”

She leans back against the door to let him unbutton her sundress; tilts her head to let him nip at her exposed neck; lifts her arms and locks her hands behind his head to let him skim over her ribs and the bandage protecting her new tattoo.

He slows down then; the marked skin no more painful to her than the subject it represents will always be to the both of them.

She nudges him backwards to the bed, tugs at the hem of his t-shirt.

“No fair if you don’t get naked, too.”

“Well, you’re not naked yet.”

But his shirt, belt, and jean shorts all fall to the floor before she lets him get his hands back on the clasp of her bra, then on her breasts, and _God_. She pushes him down on his back and climbs up to straddle him.

“This is all very - _Jesus,_ Scully - very impressive, but you’re - still not naked.”

“Don’t let that stop you.”

This whispered into that spot beneath his ear while she presses down against his chest, and she thinks he must moan at least as loud as her when he pushes her soaked panties aside to find her hot and wet.

“You like this, huh?”

Two fingers, three fingers, his thumb paying attention just where it should - _of course_ she likes it.

“ _You_ might like this…”

She leans back to tug his boxers off and regretfully pushes his hand away long enough to get rid of her own panties; then he’s on her and in her again, sitting up to capture her mouth with his.

She pushes his hand away again before rubbing against his hard length.

“...but I’m here for something else entirely.”

And with that she sinks down on him, takes him in inch by inch, touching her forehead to his when she pauses to adjusts. He gasps with her everytime she moves just a tiny bit.

“Scully, God. I love you, love you, love you _so_ much, do you - do you know that. Do you know that.”

Oh, she does. She does, she does.

-

They spend fifteen hours on dusty back roads, crossing through Wyoming.

**Author's Note:**

> say hi on [tumblr](https://catarinquar.tumblr.com)!


End file.
